Cast:
Taylor Schilling (Dagny Taggart), Grant Bowler (Henry "Hank" Rearden), Matthew Marsden (James Taggart), Graham Beckel (Ellis Wyatt), Edi Gathegi (Edwin "Eddie" Willers), Jsu Garcia (Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia), Michael Lerner (Wesley Mouch), Jack Milo (Richard McNamara), Ethan Cohn (Owen Kellogg), Rebecca Wisocky (Lillian Rearden), Christina Pickles (Mother Rearden), Neill Barry (Philip Rearden), Patrick Fischler (Paul Larkin), Sylva Kelegian (Ivy Starnes), Jon Polito (Orren Boyle), and Michael O'Keefe (Hugh Akston) Directed by Paul Johansson.
Review:
You may or may not know the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Born and educated in the Russian Empire, she moved to the States in 1926 and wrote a handful of novels and plays (I vaguely remember reading Anthem as a high school freshman over ten years ago but can remember more about Orwell's Animal Farm by a landslide). Describing the book as her magnum opus and one about "the role of man's mind in existence", the book grew a certain following among libertarians among a wide variety of reviews (one review said that within the novel, "a voice can be heard ... commanding: 'To a gas chamber—go!'"). Every year, over 400,000 copies of the words of Rand (including the novel) is donated to high schools by an institute that bears her name. For decades, there had been rumblings of trying to make the novel into either a film or a miniseries, with Rand even trying to make a screenplay before she died in 1982. The rights ot the film had been given to her heir in Leonard Peikoff, who had sold an option on producing the film to investor John Aglialoro in 1992 (a chairman of Cybex International and a member of the Board of Trustees of The Atlas Society). Through failed attempts at a miniseries on TNT and a project overseen by Howard and Karen Baldwin and Lions Gate Entertaiment that went nowhere in the 2000s, Aglialoro eventually took it upon himself to write screenplay with Brian Patrick O'Toole (as opposed to using the script by Randall Wallace that would've somehow made the movie into a two-hour work) that eventually got into production just two days before the film option was to expire. Stephen Polk was replaced by Paul Johansson as director just before filming began; Johansson is mostly known as an actor to go alongside directing fourteen episodes of One Tree Hill and go figure that this is his only directing credit. Shot over the course of less than six weeks for apparently over $10 million (speculation was that it actually was $20 million, but at any rate, "red camera technology" was used to get digital images for the film), the movie had to go through covert marketing outside of the usual norm that saw promotion from whatever "FreedomWorks" is. The movie never was released to more than 500 theaters at any point during its release cycle that started in April of 2011. Aglialoro went so far as to call critics who panned the film as "lemmings" that were scared of Ayn Rand and called it motivation to get the sequels made, which were done with lessening budgets and different directors and cast for each successor in 2012 and 2013.
Honestly, I don't really try to put much of a political slant in these reviews (editorializing is more fun in calling Evel Knievel a bum than trying to spend sentences on Michael Moore, for example), I just go for what might be interesting (with Turkey Week being the "fun" alternative). It was either going to be this film or God's Not Dead (2014) and I shudder to wonder if I picked the sillier movie by accident. You just have to love a movie where an overhead shot cuts to a closeup where one says, "In order to save my family's business [actor pause] I'm going to have to abandon it" which is then immediately followed by a guy playing with a train set. I just have to ask myself: what in the actual hell is this movie? Where the hell did the money go to make a movie that has the trappings of a Hallmark movie? Do libertarians treat this movie like folks treat religious movies? The only thing "epic" about this movie is that it has the absolute weirdest sensibility about storytelling and dialogue that feels like it was written by aliens. This weirdo rendition of 2016 somehow makes the real one look sane by comparison, complete with obsession for trains. The jargon that gets spoken on screen makes me appreciate the technobabble heard on Star Trek episodes because at least those episodes didn't feel like pants about to rip in two from stress or involve a "State Science Institute". Folks disappear when people ask about "John Galt" while their photo turns to black-and-white that lists their name as if it was an NCIS episode, with the last guy being "on strike". People either share exhubrance for being in boardroom meetings or trains in a manner that suggests the movie is actually the product of someone actually having sex with a boardroom or train. I suppose there might have been something about "makers vs. takers" and capitalism to talk about here, but the whole experience is hollow and not at all compelling enough to not move past being a self-righteous screed about governments and money that has the persuasive power of a homeless man talking to you about certain men being the Devil for 97 minutes. The only amusement I get is the random bits with name actors trying to make sense of playing such weird caricatures, whether that involves Armin Shimerman (best known as Quark on possibly the best Star Trek show in Deep Space Nine) talking about "social danger" metals or Polito and Lerner playing spooky elites. Schilling and Bowler don't prove ideal to serving these leads because the characters have very little depth to actually deliver substance (you would almost rather see a hammy actor) that might actually make you wonder if they swapped brains with Neil Breen. Beckel just gives off crazy vibes. By the time one gets to burning oil wells for the climax (okay, funny word to use for the film but still), one is as satisfied in getting to the "End of Part I" title card as one would be in finding that one's housekeys were on the roof. As a whole, this is a baffling movie to watch, having little to offer people in actual production value that looks and feels cheap in the ways that matter most for a hollow experience. It somehow seems out of date and out of touch in terms of delivering a point beyond meandering mealy-mouth mush.
Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.
Candidates that fell by the wayside for our fifth and most successful Turkey Week in terms of terrible crap seen:
Mitchell (1975), If Ever I See You Again (1978), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Simon Sez,
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, Killing Me Softly, Project Moonbase, Shanghai Surprise / Body of Evidence, The Slime People, Don't Go in the Woods, H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come, Folks!,
The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, Return to Blue Lagoon,
The Starfighters, The Identical / God's Not Dead, Dave Movie, and 2024's Reagan / The Crow.
We shall see where the road takes Turkey Week in 2025.
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